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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Can I grind carbide on a bench grinder or do I need some special wheel? I have a carbide tipped router bit I’d like to modify the profile on if it’s not too impossible, but I may just grind a shaper knife. We set one pedestal grinder apart from the others with just silicon carbide wheels on it, iirc one wheel is for carbide sharpening only and the other is for TIG electrodes only. Kind of an odd setup, but it's a learning environment where a lot of dumbasses use tools in innovative dumbass ways, so I think the logic is 1) diamond is ideal for both but an expensive waste for student-level wear and tear, so silicon carbide is an acceptably-budget-minded middle ground between that and the rest of the shop's aluminum oxide wheels for these two specific tasks 2) the more we can differentiate this grinder from the standard pedestal grinders, the less likely someone will be to mash mild steel or aluminum or god knows what in there, and two niche dressing tasks for one machine help do the differentiating for students passively irt how people interact with it in the shop space 3) although silicon carbide is soft + wears fast, that's not a huge liability for occasional-use tools in a non-production environment, and it gives us the excellent asset of very easily shedding contamination and being quick to dress, so when someone DOES misuse the special Green Wheel Grinder we can make it good to use for electrodes again quickly and without much skill required, and dressing a wheel IS a great shop skill to give people... which leads to 4) every problem simple enough that it can be fixed by a thoughtful student after a brief primer from a teacher is actually a dodged bullet; a Real Problem is when an issue is technical enough that it puts a machine out of commission until an employee can look at it-and who knows how long that'll take, depending on how arcane the machine tool in question is. not-problems that double as learning opportunities are excellent alternatives to Real Problems where possible
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Oct 10, 2018 23:51
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...all that's to say uh yeah you can grind carbide reasonably well with abrasives a fair sight cheaper than diamond, but i suspect One Legged Ninja is correct in that trying to freehand a new profile in a router bit will likely not turn out great if you don't know exactly what you're going for and know what a bang-on grind looks like. just restoring the existing edge should be more practical to do yourself but bits for wood are different beasts from the twist drills or endmills i know so don't take my word as gospel here
Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 10, 2018 23:54
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Can I grind carbide on a bench grinder or do I need some special wheel? I have a carbide tipped router bit I’d like to modify the profile on if it’s not too impossible, but I may just grind a shaper knife. Where I work we get a lot of our tooling reconditioned. Google "tool sharpening near me" for local places that specialize in that. I have no idea what it costs though.
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Oct 11, 2018 00:45
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Yooper posted:We have drawers like that and in my experience either you make the gaps very precise and don't pull the drawer out very far, or leave a ton of slop. Otherwise we see the operators pull them out too far, then they bind, and they fight getting them back in. I much prefer the ones with 6mm spacing on either side. Becoming somewhat wary of having to wrestle with annoying glides and the usual frustration I tend to have whenever I work with drawers I am considering giving into a compromise solution, namely euro drawer slides.
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Oct 11, 2018 07:10
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His Divine Shadow posted:Becoming somewhat wary of having to wrestle with annoying glides and the usual frustration I tend to have whenever I work with drawers I am considering giving into a compromise solution, namely euro drawer slides. All our Lista cabinets use those. You can fill them with tool holders, gage plates, cheetos, whatever, and they never skip a beat. I've got one filled with surface grinding tooling and it opens great.
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Oct 11, 2018 11:53
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So this isn't exactly metalworking related, but kinda manufacturing related, just curious what you guys might think. I work in a machine shop in Massachusetts. It's very expensive to love around here, to the point where I really don't think I would want to buy a house. My skill set is pretty niche but I'm very good at it. I always go poking around on Indeed, just to see what else is out there. I'm always seeing jobs in the Midwest - Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Wyoming. Because of what I do, I've seen quite a few listings with pay comparable to what I make here. The thing is, in a lot of these places, housing is literally like 75% less than comparable houses in my area. My company got bought out a couple years ago, and I don't like the the new owner as much as the old guy I worked for for 15 years. I wouldn't say I'm unhappy, but I have definitely been checking out other jobs more than I did in the past. I know the grass is always greener, etc, am I crazy for considering this? I dunno, just spitballing here, it's nice to think about I guess.
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Oct 11, 2018 23:25
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A Proper Uppercut posted:So this isn't exactly metalworking related, but kinda manufacturing related, just curious what you guys might think. What's your skillset?
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Oct 11, 2018 23:37
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Yooper posted:Manufacturing skills are in serious demand in Michigan/Wisconsin/Minnesota. Especially if you're talented, work a full shift, and show up consistently. There's tons of manufacturers who would kill for good employees. The most powerful leverage you have is the ability to leave. So many people are stuck in a mortgage/relationship/whatever and it locks them into lovely jobs. I say shop around. Whatcha got to lose? I'm (I suppose) an expert on wire edm and small hole edm, I've run them for 17 years. Also can program and run waterjet and laser cutters, can do basic stuff on manual/cnc milling, also surface grinding. I've worked in this one place since I was 17 so I've kinda just evolved into being the head guy and managing 10 guys or so. Also making more money than I thought I could in this trade. I guess I still have some loyalty to the company even though it's a new owner. Also moving halfway across the country is scary.
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Oct 11, 2018 23:54
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I was at a Mazak training center last week and they had a map showing how many integrex machines had been bought in each state since like 2005 or something, and the Midwest was orders of magnitude higher than others. I think it's a pretty representative sample of where manufacturing is at from a regional perspective. You're not on a bad train of thought. The Midwest is definitely the epicenter for this industry. Unfortunately your background isn't very diverse so if I were you I would just keep an eye out and see if the right opportunity at the right pay comes up and if it does, jump on it. Employers love to see a long history at one company to show that you're reliable, but they like relevant experience even more, and you're going to have a lot of blank spots in your knowledge base when it comes to things that weren't even on your company's radar. The diversity in the work and procedures from shop to shop can be pretty staggering. If you think you can talk up your CNC and manual skills enough tho, then you might be able to swing some sort of floor supervisor position. A lot of the higher paying places want an associates for positions like that. Maybe someone somewhere wants an EDM programmer and can give you the right pay too, but I think most places have a dedicated engineering department that handles most of their programming. I stumbled across a place that didn't which is cool because I can write my own programs and keep my skills honed, but this is the only company I've seen that does that. Just keep in mind that you get what you pay for when it comes to the cost of housing. If you've got a family and you're just looking to hang out and take it easy until retirement, then you can get a nice house on the cheap to do it in. But if you like to go out and experience new things then you're gonna run out of options really soon and start to hate it. The really big Midwestern cities that actually have poo poo to do have the same issues as the ones you have now. Same pay, higher cost of living.
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Oct 12, 2018 00:31
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Volkerball posted:I was at a Mazak training center last week and they had a map showing how many integrex machines had been bought in each state since like 2005 or something, and the Midwest was orders of magnitude higher than others. I think it's a pretty representative sample of where manufacturing is at from a regional perspective. You're not on a bad train of thought. The Midwest is definitely the epicenter for this industry. Unfortunately your background isn't very diverse so if I were you I would just keep an eye out and see if the right opportunity at the right pay comes up and if it does, jump on it. Employers love to see a long history at one company to show that you're reliable, but they like relevant experience even more, and you're going to have a lot of blank spots in your knowledge base when it comes to things that weren't even on your company's radar. The diversity in the work and procedures from shop to shop can be pretty staggering. If you think you can talk up your CNC and manual skills enough tho, then you might be able to swing some sort of floor supervisor position. A lot of the higher paying places want an associates for positions like that. Maybe someone somewhere wants an EDM programmer and can give you the right pay too, but I think most places have a dedicated engineering department that handles most of their programming. I stumbled across a place that didn't which is cool because I can write my own programs and keep my skills honed, but this is the only company I've seen that does that. The jobs I'm looking at, I'm specifically searching for wire edm positions. A lot of it ends up being at aerospace, medical manufacturers, tool and die, and places that do injection molding and extrusion dies. From what I've been looking at, even the suburbs of some of the bigger Midwestern cities, the housing prices are nothing compared to the Boston area. We're also not looking for anything much culture wise, just some good outdoors and a movie theatre, we are very boring people. Assuming some of these ads on Indeed aren't total bullshit, there are jobs in the suburbs of the Midwest that pay the same I make now with much lower housing costs.
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Oct 12, 2018 00:53
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I got my job on indeed. Worked well for me.
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Oct 12, 2018 00:57
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Dayton Ohio is starved for people who know what they're doing and show up every day. There are enough machine shops in the area that if you move for the job and don't like it you can find many others without moving again. Night life here sucks compared to major cities but it's an hour from Cincinnati and an hour and a half from Columbus with dirt cheap housing.
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Oct 12, 2018 03:55
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If you are looking at the midwest give tool and die shops a serious look. There are a ton class a tool shops in the region that do very interesting work. One area to check out is around Madison, WI. Lots of shops, really fun town, not far away from Chicago, and cheaper housing than any coast in addition to Northern WI being gorgeous, cheese curds and pre-funking Friday fish fry's before a movie.
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Oct 12, 2018 05:23
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A Proper Uppercut posted:The jobs I'm looking at, I'm specifically searching for wire edm positions. A lot of it ends up being at aerospace, medical manufacturers, tool and die, and places that do injection molding and extrusion dies. If you take the leap please start a ‘building a life in the country (season 2)’ thread, thanks in advance.  I found myself in a slightly similar position to you a little over 10 years ago in that I was working for a local firm that basically only paid what they had to. So if you started on 30k 5 years later it’d be a little more but not much. But if you left they’d pay your green replacement the going rate of 40k without blinking. I quit, dug into my savings to take 2 years to retrain and haven’t looked back. It was scary and There were times I thought I’d made a terrible mistake but in the long term my old job was slowly killing my spirit. Long story short; I wish you well stranger.
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Oct 12, 2018 07:38
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rump buttman posted:If you are looking at the midwest give tool and die shops a serious look. There are a ton class a tool shops in the region that do very interesting work. I see a Madison roadtrip in my future. What is pre-funking a fish fry? I hear great things about Madison. I had a chance to move there out of college to work for a medical software company.
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Oct 12, 2018 12:04
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Yooper posted:I see a Madison roadtrip in my future. What is pre-funking a fish fry? Everyone loves Madison except people who have to commute out to aforementioned medical software company.
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Oct 12, 2018 22:11
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Yooper posted:I see a Madison roadtrip in my future. What is pre-funking a fish fry? Every fish fry I've ever been to in WI has had you wait at the bar before you get seated and in my experience, it's hard not to get sloshed before all you can eat fried food. ymmv
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Oct 13, 2018 00:34
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dont forget to visit the wisCANsin dells!
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Oct 13, 2018 00:49
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Job hunting wire edm I don’t think you’re crazy at all. Also there’s a resume thread in BFC. I’m a HUGE fan of LinkedIn and indeed. Strongly suggest getting those two in order with an upcoming up to date resume. Shouldn’t take too long and a lot of jobs you can apply to pretty quickly just to test the waters. Feel free to post your resume in the resume thread if you want input.
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Oct 13, 2018 01:15
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shovelbum posted:Everyone loves Madison except people who have to commute out to aforementioned medical software company. That must be an epic commute... I'll just show myself out. rump buttman posted:Every fish fry I've ever been to in WI has had you wait at the bar before you get seated and in my experience, it's hard not to get sloshed before all you can eat fried food. ymmv Sounds like the fish frys up here. Bonus points during lent where the Miller High Life is served with a side of fist fights and state police intervention. But back to metalworking. I've got a small grinding wheel dresser I'm putting together. We're trying out interference fit way covers mated to teflon to keep out the grit. Right now we have to re-scrape the dovetail system every 6 months. Hoping that by sealing it up tight and using linear slides we can go to a replacement system instead.
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Oct 13, 2018 01:39
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I've always wanted to learn to weld, let's learn to weld! Aldi arc welder, some 2mm rods and tig gloves, whatever scrap metal I had lying around  Learning to strike an arc, followed by laying a bead on a flat piece  Let's try that with 2 pieces of metal? Technically they were stuck together by now  Broke them apart and tried again  Realised this wasn't working because I'd not ground the paint off this side. Then I turned the current up and tripped the breaker in the garage, but that's not particularly worrying because the vacuum cleaner sometimes does that too. I need to get some proper scraps of thicker metal and practice again tomorrow. If I don't wake up blind.
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Oct 21, 2018 17:35
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cakesmith handyman posted:I've always wanted to learn to weld, let's learn to weld! If you're using the Aldi electrodes throw them out and buy some decent 2 or 2.5mm rods from a welding supplies, the aldi ones are poo poo and terrible to learn with.
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Oct 21, 2018 18:12
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They didn't come with electrodes and yes I picked some up from a better store.
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Oct 21, 2018 19:14
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Aldi, as in the grocery store?
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Oct 21, 2018 19:41
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cakesmith handyman posted:They didn't come with electrodes and yes I picked some up from a better store. Aldi sell rods alongside the welders when they have them here and they're terrible. Surprised that a small inverter like that is tripping your breaker, do you know what amperage its rated for? Even full throttle on a 2mm rod on that machine would just blow the 13amp fuse before tripping the 15 or 20A breaker that should be on your sockets assuming you're in the UK. Its either underrated or faulty either way you should probably replace it.
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Oct 21, 2018 19:59
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The garage is on a 20A breaker and I've had many different 13A tools trip it, it's over sensitive, not a problem with the tool. My neighbor has exactly the same issue, he reckons it's because the garage consumer unit is fed by a single breaker in the house, rather than a separate feed. Yes Aldi as in the grocery store.
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Oct 21, 2018 20:29
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I used to grapple with oft-tripp'd breakers while welding and my convenience workaround was plugging the welder into an appropriately-beefy extension cord with built-in circuit breaker that was rated to trip an amp or two lower than the breaker was- it didn't trip any less often, but i could have the power bar right by the welding table so the trip would occur within arm's reach and could be reset within seconds to prevent a trip from 100% guaranteed loving my bead up
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Oct 21, 2018 23:53
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Stock prep question, for reasons* I have a grinder but only the one 6mm disc that came with it. I'm going to get a wire wheel and some thin cutting discs but I'm baffled by the selection of flap/abrasive discs, for prepping steel stock for welding what should I get? *I did have a 125mmm grinder and a big selection of discs but the grinder died and I bought the cheapest replacement without looking too closely to finish the job. I later realised I'd bought a 115mmm grinder so I gave away the discs that didn't fit, lest I one day in desperation be tempted to use one without the guard.
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Oct 23, 2018 22:37
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I found a cool youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=channel?UCfsznjef2zGJnrCRQBXqo6Q Think this is a great intro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNRnrn5DE58
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Oct 24, 2018 10:01
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His Divine Shadow posted:I found a cool youtube channel: Will is a personal friend of mine! I'm delighted someone independently found his videos for this thread.  He slaved over that second video for months, with multiple dry runs. My wife and I did a critique session for him.
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Oct 24, 2018 20:47
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Leperflesh posted:Will is a personal friend of mine! I'm delighted someone independently found his videos for this thread. Did youtube break again? I get video unavailable.
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Oct 24, 2018 21:24
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The channel is called "Machine Thinking" - I can't link it because SA automatically tries to parse it like a video even if you turn off auto-parse URLs.
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Oct 24, 2018 21:27
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His Divine Shadow posted:Think this is a great intro This guy can't get enough love. I got his video of the machine that built everything suggested after a This Old Tony video, and I have just loved every video he's put together. I've learned a lot of history, and he knows how to tell a compelling story.
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Oct 24, 2018 23:39
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I just finished up his Origins of Precision video, that dude is great. Total pro-click.
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Oct 25, 2018 00:33
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 liked commented subscribed
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Oct 25, 2018 01:00
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His Divine Shadow posted:I found a cool youtube channel: Just watched this and it was a pro click
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Oct 25, 2018 01:45
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That's a great channel. Simon Winchester's new-ish book "The Perfectionists" is on the same subject and is a great read. "English and American Tool Builders" by Joseph Wickham Roe is long out of print (original copyright is 1916) but well worth reading if you can find it. It covers alot of the really early stuff like Maudslay, who invented the three plate method of making surface plates, the modern metal lathe, and a micrometer accurate to .0001" (in 1805!), the Portsmouth Block Mills and Bramagh etc. It always astonishes me what they did with basically hand tools to start. I'd never seen a picture of Maudslay's micrometer, but you can see it here. Really wonderful how he made it a beautiful object with turned legs and chased beads as well as a functional one.
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Oct 25, 2018 02:11
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Obligatory plug for Wayne R. Moore's Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy and Sir Henry Bessemer, F.R.S: An Autobiography
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Oct 25, 2018 02:29
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Oct 25, 2018 02:35
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Is that the autobiography? That's some good poo poo.
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Oct 25, 2018 05:15
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